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Sharon L. Krossa, PhD — Resume

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Web Project Consultant and Trainer

Nine years experience as a friendly web-project consultant & trainer with a passion for finding appropriate solutions to client problems and making those solutions understandable. Skills include a deep understanding of Drupal technology & Drupal best practice, as well as strong verbal communication skills and the ability to guide and coordinate the work of others. Excellent analytical & mentoring ability with a reputation for demystifying technology and producing maintainable solutions.

Summary

I [manage | guide | teach
         (clients,
                  including individuals | groups | departments | companies
                  of experienced web professionals | faculty | technical staff | non-technical staff
         )
         and | or
         (teams,
                  including graphic designers | content contributors | site managers | site builders | module developers
         )
         to
]
plan | design | build | maintain | improve | update | fix
websites and web applications, with attention to best practices for
information architecture | content strategy | accessibility | usability | security | sustainability | web standards | Drupal standards | incremental development | organizational identity | organizational policy compliance
[via
         meetings | mentoring | conference sessions | classes | written communications,
                  including email | mailing lists | blogs | handouts | documentation
]

Employment History

Founder, Web Strategist, Drupal Consultant & Trainer, SK+; Mar 2009–present
Drupal Trainer & Consultant, multiple departments, Stanford University; May 2008–present

At Stanford and as SK+, design and build Drupal websites both alone and coordinating teams. Teach site design, construction, and maintenance to clients, most often using a holistic “training by doing” approach: guiding trainees as they work on their own sites rather than textbook exercises, so training time is also development/project time—a kind of “pair programming” for Drupal sites that enhances learning and retention. Example projects:

Designing & Building

  • Designed architecture for & built unified Stanford Language Center site to accommodate consistent & efficient user experience across both twelve single language and three multi-language programs—each with their own editorial team and appearing to be an independent site—while giving all fifty-five languages within both types of programs their own flexible content sections that can be maintained and expanded by non-technical staff.
  • Worked for Stanford Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity on the design and initial development of the Faculty Search Toolkit, a web application that facilitates best practices in faculty recruiting. Designed and managed later major feature additions and improvements, including transition from subsection of department’s Drupal 6 site to independent Drupal 7 site. Coordinated work of successive Drupal assistants, department staff, and external module developers. Still technical lead for the project, planning and executing new enhancements.
  • Designed and managed building of Drupal 6 site for Stanford Faculty Affairs. Directed Drupal assistant. Taught non- technical staff member to create and update content herself. Recommended switch to SWS Jumpstart for Drupal 7; due to prior training, this is allowing staff to transition to Drupal 7 without further assistance from me.
  • Worked for Stanford Director of Faculty Appointments and Promotions on the design of a secure, paperless system for the collection, management, and review of faculty appointment and promotion files. After evaluating various technologies, created the system using only Box.

Designing & Training/Mentoring

  • Rapidly trained an experienced web developer who was new to Drupal to convert the Stanford Entrepreneurship Network site from static HTML to Drupal under a tight deadline. With less than 40 hours of one-to-one custom training over the course of two calendar months, the web developer was able to launch the new site on time and with enhanced features.
  • Trained a team of three (project manager, server administrator, and graphic designer —all new to Drupal) to build the new Stanford Shared FACS Facility site using Drupal. With less than 20 hours of custom training over the course of about a calendar year, the team was able to create and launch the new site at their own pace, fitting in training and development as their schedules allowed.
  • Trained someone new to both web development and Drupal to convert a static HTML site to Drupal —Stanford Office of Audit, Compliance and Privacy— with improved content structure and management. Trained another to build a new bilingual site, USDKexpats.org.
  • Acted as technical consultant to half a dozen mostly non-technical stakeholders from multiple departments for a grass-roots, collaborative site design and development project for the Stanford Student Affairs Drupal site launched in 2009.
  • Taught a customized introductory Drupal course to the University of San Francisco web team in preparation for the transition of the university's site to Drupal.
  • Taught a team of key staff from Stanford Alumni and Development Information Systems about Drupal as part of a technology evaluation and selection process.
  • Developed and taught two half-day hands-on Drupal training courses for Techie Festival 2010 for Stanford ITS Technology Training Services.
  • Developed and taught a series of six 90-minute hands-on Drupal workshops at Tech Briefings Summer 2009–Summer 2010, commissioned by Stanford ITS Technology Training Services. (Handouts and videos available.)

Coordinator, Innovative Research Collaborations, Academic Technology Specialists Program, Stanford University; Dec 2007 - Jun 2008

Worked with ATS Program to assist faculty to collaborate with other researchers at Stanford and around the world, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. Used Drupal 5 for projects including the Human Spatial Dynamics Lab, the Cultural Heritage Resource, and the Spatial History Network. Contributed documentation to Stanford Technology Commons.

Independent Consultant; Nov 2004 - Nov 2007

Projects ranged from technical editor for Baby Names for Dummies by Margaret Rose (Wiley Publishing Inc., 2005) to technical consultant for an online archaeological database developed using HTML, PHP, and MySQL.

Academic Technology Specialist, Linguistics Department, Stanford University; Mar 1999 - Aug 2000

Provided technical expertise and training to faculty and students on a variety of research and teaching projects. These included websites, databases, corpora, and evaluations of hardware and software. Collaborated with other ATSes and Academic Computing staff on division- and university-wide projects. Supervised a student worker.

Relevant Volunteer Work & Hobbies

Drupallers Drop-in Help

Founded and continue to organize monthly free gathering for Stanford community & general public to drop in and be helped with any Drupal questions they have (or to drop in and help others). Since starting in January 2011, attendance has usually been between six & twelve people per month, with some attendees helping but most seeking help.

Conference Sessions & Tech Briefings

Drupallets Blog

“Droplets of Drupal and Drupal-related wisdom…” from philosophy to how-tos to hiring.

Education

PhD, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK; 2006

Dissertation: A Study of Expectations: Women in the Burgh of Aberdeen in the Later Middle Ages (Department of History)
Used computer technology to analyze historical records. Designed and developed a complex historical documents text and analysis system with a high degree of intelligent automation. Results enabled unprecedented analysis of source documents for Scottish medieval social history. Explained workings of database program to non-technical audience in dissertation.

AB, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts

Majors: Physics and Medieval Studies

Related technical skills

Drupal, Drush, UNIX/Linux shell scripting, PHP, MySQL, HTML5, CSS3, JIRA, Dreamweaver